Fortune's Many Houses

December 14, 2020
Television producer Welfare explores in this colorful debut biography the glamorous, philanthropic lives of Scottish aristocrats John and Ishbel Gordon, who bankrolled numerous social causes in Britain and North America even as they bankrupted themselves through bad investments and extravagant building projects. Married in 1877, the Gordons’ honeymoon was a portent of things to come. Before the couple set out for Egypt, burglars stole Ishbel’s extensive jewelry collection; weeks later, she and John were setting up impromptu health clinics during a trip down the Nile River (they also took on the living and educational expenses of four former slave boys). During John’s tenure as the governor general of Canada from 1893 to 1898, Ishbel formed the Victorian Order of Nurses in Ottawa and initiated book drives to benefit rural areas. Both abroad and in Scotland, where they were the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, John and Ishbel designed, renovated, and built numerous stately homes; meanwhile, dodgy investments, including a series of North American ranches poorly managed by Ishbel’s brothers, further drained the couple’s resources. Welfare, who is married to the Gordons’ great-granddaughter, draws on an extensive collection of family papers to provide intriguing details about the couple’s social life and political causes. These imperfect do-gooders make for entertaining company.

December 11, 2020

Written by TV producer Welfare ("Mysterious World" series), who is married to the subjects' great-granddaughter, this account is a personal look at Lord and Lady Aberdeen's contributions to the United Kingdom and Canada in the Victorian era and beyond. The Aberdeens were wealthy nobility, and the norms of the day were to tend to their homes and attend social events that would befit their station. While Lord Aberdeen (1847-1934) served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Governor General of Canada, Lady Aberdeen (1857-1939) focused on social works. These included founding the Victorian Order of Nurses, developing a household club whereby their servants could learn reading and other skills (highly controversial and frowned upon by their peers), and using their residences as hospitals during World War I. Over time, their overspending on homes and projects meant that they lost most of the fortune by their deaths in the 1930s. VERDICT This work uses primary resources to tell the story of a special couple who were the exception rather than the norm. While there are a few other works about them, including their own 1927 reminiscence We Twa, this balanced recounting will be enjoyed by those who savor details on nobility during the Victorian era.--Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2021
The story of two British aristocrats who aimed to change their world. TV producer Welfare creates a vibrant portrait of British society through his animated, well-informed dual biography of John Gordon (1847-1934) and his wife, Ishbel (1857-1939), the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen, who were his wife's great-grandparents. Drawing on copious family papers--letters, diaries, rent books, financial ledgers--as well as the couple's joint memoir, Welfare follows the peripatetic lives of John and Ishbel, famous among their incredulous peers for their devotion to social reform. Luminaries of high society--the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of the royal family, and even Queen Victoria herself were among their many guests--they spared no expense on their reform efforts. Even cruising the Nile River on their honeymoon, they set up "impromptu clinics" to address dire health needs: "the first of countless enlightened, innovative, and often expensive ways in which, over nearly sixty years, Johnny and Ishbel worked to improve social conditions wherever they went. And they cared not a hoot if they risked the contempt of their peers by taking their campaigns to the slum dwellers." Welfare unfolds his narrative by focusing on the grand houses in which Lord and Lady Aberdeen lived in London, Ireland, Canada, and Scotland. Just outside Aberdeen, Ishbel founded the Haddo House Association, which "acted as a virtual school, allowing housemaids and cooks to study at home in their quarters or in the servants' hall," with local ladies "cajoled into acting as tutors." In Canada, she established the Victorian Order of Nurses to attend to medical needs in remote areas. Her campaign to address the spread of tuberculosis in Ireland earned her the derisive nickname "Viceregal Microbe." As the author demonstrates in this fluid narrative, the couple persisted in their charitable projects even when house expenses, travel, failure of several Canadian ranches, and years of generous hospitality brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. A fresh, engaging cultural history of the rich doing good.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2021
It must have been in the DNA of Welfare's in-laws to search for a homesite in northeastern Scotland. The land they chose once belonged to his wife's great-grandparents, Ishbel and John Gordon, the seventh Earl of Aberdeen, and their experience of running ruinously over budget echoed the circumstances Ishbel and Johnny endured throughout their peripatetic lives as politicians, court appointees, and social activists in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. With this as backdrop, Welfare chooses to hang his biography of the Aberdeens on the various homes they built or restored throughout the United Kingdom, Canada, and even America, and his attention to period detail enhances his depiction of their grandiose lives and surroundings as he focuses on the pageantry and opulence that attended the establishment of each lavish new estate. In their unfettered acquisitiveness, the Aberdeens represented the epitome of Victorian excess, a character trait that would prove to be their undoing as they ended their lives penniless, their properties sold or lying in ruins. A vibrant, rich, and dynamic historical portrait drawn from an invaluable insider viewpoint.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.